The Best Australian Stories 2010 (24 page)

From the hotel kitchen, the proprietor looked anxiously out at the Kellys. He didn't want any trouble. You had to admire her, Mrs K., hauling that Bill Frost over the coals; he was a slimy piece of work and no mistake. But they were getting through the whisky like there was no tomorrow …

He stepped forward. ‘Mrs Kelly

… sorry to interrupt

…' ‘Don't be sorry, nobody's sorry this day! Your good health, sir!'

‘The horses. Will you be riding out tonight, or do you want me to turn them out into the paddock?'

‘The horses! My poor Nellie: here we've been, feeding our faces, forgetting about our poor bloody horses. No, we won't be riding home tonight.'

The proprietor nodded.

‘Right. Will you be seeing to them then?'

‘We will. This very minute we will! But a ride, now, a ride: couldn't you all just do with a gallop? Annie, you mind that very first evening we moved into Eleven Mile? You and me and Ned, racing to the top of Bald Hill and back?'

‘Of course I do: a place of our own at last … Ma! Ma, where're you going?'

‘Poor things haven't been out all day.'

‘But Ma …'

‘Mrs Kelly, it's getting dark …'

‘A victory ride! Jesus, it's not every day the Kellys beat the law! And haven't we got the Eleven Mile? And the brave boys to work it? Oh, I mind after Ned got his green sash for saving the Shelton boy, him and me galloping flat tack through the bush back of Avenel, his sash flying out behind him like freedom itself … our Ned. Sure he'll be back soon and then the place'll be like itself again! Come on!'

Thundering hooves: curtains twitching the length of Bridge Street. At the far end, a grey mare spun around and reared, ghostly in the evening light. Her rider's dark hair swirled around her face …

*

Benalla Police Court, Tuesday, 24 October 1871, before
Mr Butler, PM

Jesus wept. Here we are again.

Furious riding in a public place.

Have they nothing better to do? Haven't reckoned on our Mr McDonnell, though, have they? Has Benalla been gazetted as a township, if you please? By Law, would it be designated as a Public Place? The Sergeant doesn't please, but he doesn't know either. No more does Mr Pow.

‘We've won, Annie, we've won! Again! Wait till we tell Ned and Alex, can't you just see their faces?'

*

Benalla Ensign
, 30 January 1872
Death Notices
Ellen Frost, only daughter of Ellen Kelly and William Frost

The Cliffs

David Mence

He comes home in a state.

His hands are shaking and he has a wild, loose look in his eye.

She has sat up for him. She sits in one of the chairs, slightly back from the table, one leg crossed over the other, looking at the fire. She looks up when he comes through the door. He is sodden even through his calf-hide coat and he peels it off with shaking hands and dumps it on the floor behind the door instead of hanging it on the hook like he normally does. He peers at the coals in the fireplace, glowing softly, and the pots and kettles suspended from their chains.

Do you want a drink of tea?

I don't know what I want but it ain't tea.

Alright then.

She takes down a bottle of grog from the split-bark shelf and uncorks the stopper and pours a double dram straight into his iron mug. He downs it in one, opening the back of his throat to catch the rasping liquid, showing on his face only the faintest trace that there is warmth in his gullet.

What kept you?

He sits down heavily at the table and puts his head in his hands. He seems to be breathing heavily but she can't quite tell and she goes to him and stands by his shoulder and runs her strong hands through his lank hair and asks him again why he is late.

Even the women and children.

I beg your pardon?

Even their women and children, he says again.

What women and children?

He prises her hands away and looks her in the eye and she likes not one bit what she sees. He coughs loudly and grabs at his throat as if there is some demon lodged there and then turns and spits on the bare earthen floor.

For God's sake, I asked you not to do that. And coughing like that is going to wake the children. At the mention of the word children his eyes seem to fold in upon themselves again and he looks at the woodgrain in the table as if he were looking at a painting or a sunset or perhaps just a table but devoid of any intellection. She picks up the rum and pours him another half glass and pulls out the closest chair and sits by his side. She sits watching him carefully and after some time she puts her hand over his.

You got to tell me what's going on. You got to share this with me.

I plan to, he says. And I will.

Alright then.

They sit there in silence while the candle gutters and the wick curls over just that little more and the drafts coming in through the holes in the thatch touch them lightly but with enough of winter to give them a chill. She thinks about putting another chunk of redgum on the coals but then from the back there is the distinct sound of a splutter and the child bawling for its mother's teat. She looks at him and then goes to the back where the child is and picks it up and shushes it gently and pats it on the back and as though she had weaved some magic spell over it it quietens again and is fast asleep. She comes back to him and he has moved ever so slightly and is looking directly at her with some sort of queer, puzzled expression.

What is it?

What?

Why you looking at me like that?

Like what?

Like how you are.

I don't know. He looks away.

With a mighty weariness he lifts his feet up onto the edge of the chair so as to unlace them and as he does so he begins to speak. Quiet and indirect but clear enough in manner that she understands he is going to tell her something she should be ready to hear. He asks her if she remembers not long ago the talk going around of the Myall Creek boys up in New South Wales and how they had hung for what they had done and she says yes she remembers that and he describes to her exactly what it was they had done to the black mobs in that area and how they had been caught and hauled into court before a magistrate and how everybody from Botany Bay to Swan River was now making sure that dispersals not be documented lest the evidence be used against them.

What's any of this to do with us? she interrupts.

Can you pack my pipe?

We don't have any tobacco. You know that.

He looks disappointed at that and strokes at his beard and then says, You know what, I would like a drink of tea after all.

Alright then.

She goes over to the billy and fills it with a pail of water standing by the sideboard and swings the kettle out and over the coals. Out of habit she picks up the lid and checks inside the pot and then puts the lid back on.

I got some damper what's fresh from tonight too if you'd like some of that?

He nods and so she opens the sideboard and takes out the damper and unwraps it from the swathe of dirty paper and cuts a section and puts it on a plate with a clump of grey butter. He thanks her with his eyes and pulls the damper apart and swabs it in the butter and chews on it very slowly as if he wants to make the most out of this moment. Before long the billy is singing and she takes the chain and pulls it up onto a wooden stool and, handling it with a bit of blackened cloth, pours a stream of hot water into his same iron cup which still has rum dregs in it. She hands the cup back to him with a large handful of black tea steeping in it. She places the sugar before him with a mottled tin spoon and lets him stir it in himself as she knows how much he enjoys that. Then she sits down again and watches him eat.

When he is done and has pushed the plate forward on the table she says he should go on with what he was saying.

He takes a sip from his tea and looks at her.

It was spoke of a few times but I don't think any of us thought it would really happen. It was just a way for us to vent what we had to vent. I mean, they done some awful things, some things what caused a lot of hurt. And setting fire to all them sheep. That was the last straw. That's what got the talk going: how many more Christian men are we going to have to inter because of them? Will they ever stop or be happy? What'll happen to our women, our children?

So we rounded them up. We had plenty of horses between us. And plenty enough guns. We took them all up the headland where the cliffs are and the seal rocks. You know the place? We had them all caballed in together and was circling round them like dogs with sheep. A few of them started to cotton on and one bloke even grabbed Dawson off his horse and pulled him to the ground and then a whole lot of crows jumped on him and started beating him with rocks in their hands. We had to shoot a couple. Dawson, poor bloke, he's pretty messed up. I don't know, I am no doctor, but I reckon his nose is broke and maybe his arm too. And then next thing we knew we was driving at them in a wall all joined together and headed for the sea. The horses flaring their nostrils and rolling their eyes. The women was wailing and tearing their hair. The children crying and not knowing why they are crying. The men shouting and pointing and their eyes wide and glaring. And all of them going over the edge in one huddled mass, smashing all of it onto the rocks below. We looked at each other with nothing to say or speak of but turn our backs and swallow down what we had done deep and ride home with our guts in our hearts. To our wives and our children sleeping in their beds. And supposedly say nothing. Take our wives in our arms and brush the hair from their foreheads and kiss our children in their cribs and say nothing.

He looks at her and his face is red and wet with tears and his voiced cracked and choking. She sits there a long time. Silent save for a certain low murmur coming from the wind in the trees outside their hut. She fixes a strand of hair back behind her ear. She stands up and stretches, as though she were going to go to bed, and stands by the fireplace.

Was Henty there?

No, but McVea was. And so was Brownless.

Brownless? What's he to do with this?

He works for Henty too. He just don't wear his heart on his sleeve like McVea.

She thinks about that for a moment, lips pursed, as though completing some difficult calculation.

I guess that's the way of things then.

I guess so.

It's a damned shame, she says, a damned shame. But we got a family too you know. She takes up the candle and licks her fingers and gives the wick a squeeze and puts it back on the table to cool and reset. She unwraps her shawl and hangs it behind the door and goes to him and takes his hand and stands him up and puts her arms around him.

You must be tired?

She takes her arms from him and goes to the back of the room where the children are and gently moves them over on the dirty matting so that there will be some space for him and her and then removes her outer garments and stands there in her underclothes, still young enough to have some shape, rubbing at her forearms in the cold.

Come lie down, she says, and don't keep me waiting.

The Age of Terror

Chris Womersley

I am no stranger to the middle of the night, to its creaks and whispers. It is the time when one is most clearly able to see into the core of oneself, a moment I relished when I was a younger and vainer woman but which I now find almost unendurable. And yet, despite a regularity that grows with each passing year, I am still always surprised to find myself lying on my bed at ungodly hours, staring into the darkness. Should I live another ten years, I can imagine spending entire nights awake. Perhaps this unprovoked waking is no surprise; after all, night is where memory resides and, just as a bear lives off its fat during long, cold winters, the elderly are sustained by their memories.

The first thing I do, as my eyes adjust to the gloom, is listen for Graham's breathing. He will be eighty-two next birthday and his health is, as they say, failing. Even now his breath catches like a bicycle chain slipping a cog. But at least he is still alive, thank God. I dread the day, or the night more likely, when I shall have to put a finger to the artery at his neck, the way I once saw someone do a long time ago. I don't even really know what to feel for. A mild throb, I suppose. A pulse. All I recall is the expression on the ambulance officer's face. It struck me at the time how similar he looked to a trout fisherman, feeling for tremble on his line.

The night also, of course, offers the time and space to imagine the things one would still like to do. It is as if a lifetime of regrets, having accreted about my joints and the ventricles of my heart while sleeping, are dislodged and make themselves known: read that damn Proust epic everyone is supposed to read; sail the Mediterranean; learn an instrument. Naturally, there are other, more profound regrets: affairs never pursued; opportunities squandered. Once, forty years ago, a gentlemanly artist cornered me at one of those inner-city parties populated by the absurdly tasteful and made me an offer I could – and did – refuse but have pondered ever since. Every now and then I hear of him just when I have almost forgotten his face and when I do, it never fails to inspire in me a mild shiver of longing. Not that I regret my time with Graham. On the contrary, he has been my saviour in many ways; I could never have done it without him.